No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

In addition to Saudi Arabia’s 19 million citizens, there are nearly 8 million Asian workers in the country, as well as hundreds of thousands of other foreign expatriates from around the globe, according to government figures.

Saudi Arabia, the ultraconservative Sunni kingdom , is the home of Islam’s holiest sites. It enforces a strict interpretation of the religion.

Saudi Arabia violates human rights with head held high. China, the other human rights violator executes people secretly whereas Saudi Arabia does it publicly. Non-Muslim and poor Muslim workers are not treated as human beings in Saudi Arabia. It has been violating international labor laws with impunity. Is there no nation or united nations in the world that can warn Saudi Arabia to stop bullshiting?

Comments

Those Saudi pigs will never be enlightened to a modern scientific world. But they always enjoy the fruits of science. Once I had seen in one of your posts on FB showing a news of Saudi clerics preventing woman from eating banana, cucumber etc. as they resemble the shape of male sex-organ! Bullshit! Why there’s no revolution? Is there any ray of hope?

There are people who do not believe in evolution who want the latest antibiotics if they get drug resistant infections. Drug resistant bacteria are a result of evolution in a time span of decades, rather than millenia.
Should those who do not believe in evolution be told to get on with cheaper penicillin or stroptomycin, and be happy ?

The Saudis have not only crushed their own society, they use their massive wealth to built mosques and spread their Wahabbi poison all over the world. No one will stand up to them while they have the vast oil reserves that we need.

Building up the Wahabbist – Salfist ideology had the full approval of the USA and UK during the Cold War. Moslem rulers could always be counted on to deal with Communists and other leftists in a particularly brutal way including the massacre of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and the destruction of secular schools wherever they found them. I know Afghanis in my home town of Sheffield who talk of the school destruction.

That must be relatively new. I was in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan a few years ago and we did not have to do that. That’s a disgusting place that I never want to visit again but that was not one of the issues.

No, forcing others to abide by YOUR religious rules is called TYRANNY. Islam is the religion of hypocrites. Muslims come to the West and complain bitterly when westerners celebrate Christmas in public. In other words, western Christians should not have the right to practice their religious traditions in their home countries! Yet these same Muslims feel they have the right to FORCE non-Muslims to observe the rules of Islam in public in Muslim majority countries! Heads-I-win-tails-you-lose, huh Muslims? Is it any wonder that much of the civilized world despises Islam?

I have done Ramadan three times in Saudi.The media carried warnings to foreigners that they could be whipped and deported for violating the fast.
Those on “good contracts” could drive home for lunch in the day. There were also arrangements for ‘evening work’ in many offices, so people could work in normal circumstances. Worst affected were the poorer workers from South Asia whose employers expected them to surface roads in 50 degree heat without drink. Just like many other places it’s one law for the rich, and a harder and more vicious law for the poor.

These vicious laws and edicts should not be used to justify bad speech against Saudis in general. Many Saudis themselves evade Ramadan in a very discrete way.They know that traffic accidents go up in Ramadan.

One of the best places for a Saudi to manage Ramadan is Thailand. There are usually more Saudi overseas tourists during Ramadan.

During my spell in a desalination plant in Jeddah I remember going with other smokers into the interior of a big desalination module (A steel kettle) during 45 degree heat. It was hot inside, but we would not be observed by religious people.

To be quite honest I would prefer to spend Ramadan in Saudi Arabia than any time at all in USA. The penalties for smoking in American hotels etc. can be quite severe, and in 2012 most such places have efficient smoke detectors.

In a multicultaral society where there are some moslems, but not 100% you may find night markets during Ramadan, and maybe even a bar which serves alcohol dusk to dawn

No, I don’t. That is THEIR religion, not mine. Those restrictions are THEIR problem, not mine. I respect their choice to believe, but the beliefs themselves deserve nothing from me, they haven’t earned it.

Really… if you respect their choice to believe then you must pay respect when they’re praying or fasting. It’s called politeness. In Indonesia (where I live) non-Muslims/non-fasting people need to have a short apologize before they eat in front of people who are fasting. They have no obligation to, it’s just common decency, which you apparently lack.

That said the laws Saudi Arabia create are definitely selfish and impractical for non-Muslims; one example of a backwards nation dictated by an outdated “holy” book.

The thing is, this kind of imposition of one’s own beliefs and procedures stemming from such beliefs upon the unsuspecting general population is not unique to Saudi Arabia or even Islam. All fundamentalist religions do this. It is an expression of – more precisely, a design to showcase – the power and authority of whoever is ‘in charge’.

Let me offer a smaller-scale instance of the said expression: the medical school associated with a Jewish university (both of which shall remain nameless) of the Right Coast is a renowned institution of medical education and research, boasting of a very mixed and cosmopolitan environment. However, IIRC, during Passover (and perhaps other odd Jewish holidays here and there), when the observant Orthodox Jewish folks eschew the use of electricity and implements run by electricity, the institutional authority completely shuts down:
(a) not only the Jewish-run eateries inside the building (which is fine – the eatery personnel are observant), but also
(b) snack-dispensing vending machines,
(c) soda-dispensing machines and
(d) ATMs through the medical school and the associated hospital (all of (b), (c), (d) are manned by outside agencies).

I don’t know about the hospital, but in the research building, the snack and soda machines are highly useful to particularly graduate students and postdocs who work late after hours. The ATM is widely used by the graduate student and postdoc community because it doesn’t charge any transaction fee as a courtesy and nearest banks are quite a distance. So this weeklong observance of Passover hits the non-Jewish community at this medical school pretty hard.

Another instance: In India, Hindu fundamentalist groups and their pet political parties have lobbied long and hard, and often successfully, to close existing abattoirs and prevent new ones from opening, in various parts of the country, knowing fully well that these abattoirs serve the needs of millions of Muslim families in those places.

In both situations, Jewish or Hindu, the principle is the same: an authority or a vocal group aligned with the majority espouses a particular kind of religious belief, and everyone under direct or indirect control of the said authority/group must perforce subscribe to the tenets of that belief, or else face indifference, exclusion, infamy or even threat of violence (as in India). This inequality and power imbalance are the hallmarks of organized, fundamentalist religions.

Saudi Arabia, SA, has a lot of human rights violations. But Ramadan declaration demanding people not consume in public don’t often rise the the level of a major violation. According to people who live and work there the emphasis is on the ‘public’.

There is a very well established divide between public and private areas and behaviors appropriate within them. An example is the fondness many SA men have for expensive scotch whiskey. Yes, consumption of alcohol is prohibited, but the practical side is that it and drunkenness is prohibited in public. One oil executive noted that practically every man of means had a well stocked bar. Even many who didn’t drink themselves. It was a status symbol and an amenity for guests. Not even really a secret so much as simply not talked about.

Similarly, the restriction on consumption of food and drink has a lot of loopholes. Medical need, military necessity, and heavy work in the heat, are routinely granted exemptions. A common alternative is to pay what amounts to a small fine. This later route was the public choice of one of the SA Olympic athletes. You can eat and drink as you like. But you have to do it in private.

These quite sensible exceptions may or may not be extended to guest workers. It wouldn’t surprise me if people used their servants to garner religious favor by demanding a higher standard then they themselves observe. Forcing them to avoid consumption, public or private, even when it is unreasonable. That would mesh quite well with SA’s generally deplorable treatment of guest workers.

I’m with you standing against abuse of domestic and guest workers but as long as consumption is allowed in private, and private areas are freely available to the workers, I don’t see the demands of Ramadan to be an unreasonable burden. As with so many things the devil is in the detail.

How? Can you prove it. In Saudi Arabia, crime rate is zero. What about India and other places. How many times rapes of your sisters taking place? Saudi Arabia is the most peaceful place. Don’t spread lies. In Ramadan, the prohibition is only not to eat & drink during day time in public, Inside home or hotel, you can do anything. Even if it is emergency, you can drink & eat in public place also. More human rights violations are in India and other places. More discriminations are happening outside world. Here if you are with family, it is like heaven. Whole night or day, you can travel any sea beaches, any parks, and they are the safest places. No body even will ask you anything. Don’t spread lies.

I dont understand what you rave about … first of all, its in public, so at home you can do as you please. Second, you are guests in a place, so be so kind and respect their traditions and culture. Or go home. No need to spread panic over that, really.

All practicing religions of the world are conceptualised thousands of years ago, but, most religions of the world hv evolved. People from different faiths have mutual respect for other faiths. It’s only Islam that has chosen to stay in the dark ages maintaining their barbaric traditions, and always taking chauvinistic pleasure in humiliating people weaker than them women in Islam are a classic example. Look at the Barbarians of Boko Haram & the animals of ISIS they actually asked Iraqis to hand over all unmarried women to Jehadis so that they can serve ALLAH, by sleeping with terrorists. This the Religion of Love & Peace.

The future belongs to the one who evolves and embraces technology.Once oil is over in saudi(or becomes too expensive)….The world will suffer,but saudi will become somalua.Oil is the only reason it is surviving.

The laws of Saudi Arabia merely reflect the arrogance, intolerance and hypocrisy of Islam in general. Islam’s holy scriptures inform Muslims that they are the “best of peoples” and their religion has been perfected by Allah. With such assumptions, is it any wonder that non-Muslims are denigrated and oppressed in the original homeland of the faith? After all, those who have rejected Allah, Muhammad and the Qur’an are “the worst of creatures”. They should be fought and killed until they are thoroughly humiliated, completely subdued, submit to sharia and “religion is all for Allah”. Muslims are instructed to “smite their necks and strike off their fingertips”, to “drive them out from the places where they drove you out” etc. And all of this is just a small sampling of what Islam’s foundational texts actually teach.
True, Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism constitutes an extreme interpretation of Islam, but it is completely compatible with the contents of the foundational texts. Moreover, enforcement of Ramadan restrictions on non-Muslims happen throughout the world, wherever Muslims form either a majority or a significant minority of the population. Even in supposedly democratic Turkey, Tunisia and Indonesia those who violate the rules of Ramadan in public are often harassed by neighbors, fined or even arrested by authorities. If convicted, they may lose their jobs. Just recently a public school district in the United Kingdom tried to prevent non-Muslim pupils from bringing their water bottles to class during Ramadan, because the sight of the kuffar kids quenching their thirst upset the Muslim children who were fasting!
This is the true face of Islam when it becomes dominant in the public sphere. The religion is diametrically opposed to individual human rights and freedom. This is why it has no place in liberal democracies. Yes, Muslims should be free to practice their “religion” – in private. They should not be permitted to force its practices upon non-believers, or upon nominal Muslims for that matter.